Free tool
Travel budget calculator
Put in what you know so far and this works out the whole picture: your total budget, what each person pays, and how much you can spend per day without going over. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere. It all runs in your browser.
Return flights, trains, airport transfers
The nightly price you pay, not per person
Food, drinks, local transport, tickets
A little extra for the things you can't predict. 10 to 15% is sensible.
Your budget
€ 0 per day
How the calculator works
The maths behind it is simple, which is the point. Your accommodation is the nightly room price multiplied by the number of days. Your daily spending is the per person amount multiplied by how many of you are travelling and how many days you'll be away. Flights and transport get added on as a single group total. Then the buffer is added on top of everything else, because something always comes up.
The total per person is the full trip cost divided by the number of travellers, and the daily figure is the whole budget spread across your days. That daily number is the one worth writing down. It's the amount you can actually steer by once you're there.
Getting the daily spending right
Daily spending is where most budgets slip, so it helps to picture a normal day before you pick a number. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, a couple of coffees, a metro ticket or two, and one thing you actually came to do. Add that up for your destination and you'll have a figure that holds. A day in Lisbon or Kraków looks nothing like a day in Zurich or Copenhagen, so a number that felt fine for your last trip might be miles off for this one.
Why the buffer matters
A buffer isn't pessimism. It's the delayed train you had to rebook, the round of drinks you offered to cover, the museum that turned out to cost more than you thought. Set aside 10 to 15% and a bad afternoon stays a bad afternoon instead of blowing the whole week. If you don't touch it, that's spending money for the next trip.
Take it with you
Turn this number into a daily cap you can watch
PocketTrip keeps your budget and daily cap in front of you the whole trip, and updates it every time you log an expense. Free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.
